You're not alone! For someone with over 400 videos that
have been viewed nearly 779 million times, very little is known
about Kulakov. He has never given an interview and aside from
twoold Q&A
videos; he rarely answers his fans’
questions.

But he is one of the most popular lifehackers
on YouTube, so popular that he was able to ditch his job at
Walmart to make videos full-time.

Though Kulakov declined our request for an interview, here's what
we do know: Kulakov moved to Asheville, North Carolina, in the
early aughts after coming from Russia [hometown unknown] as a
former professional swimmer, according to him. Kulakov came to
America for — in his
words — money, girls, and a better life.

He started on YouTube back in 2009 under the
usernameorigami768, where
he gave origami tutorials. He also started another channel called
SlowMoLaboratory that never quite took off.

Then in 2012, Kulakov — who was working at Walmart at the time —
started his Crazy Russian Hacker YouTube account.

Kulakov’s YouTube videos typically start with rapid-fire sound
effects as a huge red star pops up on screen with a hammer and
sickle. Overlaid are the words, in big block letters, “CRAZY RUSSIAN
HACKER.”

“What’s up everybody?” Kulakov asks at the start of every video.
“Welcome to my laboratory, where safety is [the] #1 priority.
Boom!”

Kulakov stands at a shocking 6-foot-7 and stares into the camera
before putting on his tinted safety goggles. They look like
sunglasses, making him resemble some sort of cool, villainous
super scientist.

But Kulakov is anything but a villain. His offbeat and
good-natured humor is sometimes lost in the thickness of his
Russian accent, but, even so, Kulakov is immediately endearing.
It’s no secret watching him why he became such an internet
success.

“I got a camera, a basic cord, and start talking, like
‘What’s up everybody, welcome back to my laboratory, today we’re
going to walk on eggs,’”he said of his
first video. “And so I walked on eggs, and they didn’t
break. That was my first video, and that’s how I started making
videos, I think.”

Someconspiracy-theorist
commenters even claimed that
Taras Kulakov wasn’t his real name at all, but instead it was
Kyle Myers. Even today, comments pop up on the Crazy Russian
Hacker videos wondering whether or not Kulakov is really
Russian.

“Some people still think I’m not Russian,” he said to his fans in
a Q&A
from 2012. “And I don’t know why. Tell me why people think
I’m fake Russian [in the comments]. Why would I be faking?
Anyways.”

By 2014, Kulakov had 1 million YouTube subscribers. His
survivalist and food-hacks videos were also making headlines
on The
Huffington Post,
Popular Mechanics, and
Business Insider. He started making money through
the YouTube partnership program, which allows creators to profit
from running paid ads on their videos.

“A lot of things I know before, and a lot of things I have to
search them on [the] internet and then put my soul into it, make
them even better than what I find and make my own ideas,” he
explained about his process. “I only choose the awesome ones.”

Kulakov is now so successful that there are fan Twitter accounts
and
fan art dedicated to the YouTube sensation. All the comments
on Kulakov’s Instagram — which prominently features his beautiful
white husky, Luke — are all idolizing the YouTube star.